Driving Tips

Here I'll provide some tips on saving fuel, wear and tear and safer driving.

- When taking off from a stand still accelerate briskly, when you are in first and second gear, not too fast though. The first and second gear causes the engine to use up the most fuel even when taking off slowly. So try to get through the first and second gear as soon as possible by achieving a good speed, I normally average around 60km/h before changing into third.

- When you are going to be at a standstill for a while, switch your car off.

- Coasting your car does not save you fuel, in fact your car uses up more fuel when idling than when you are going down a hill in your highest gear.

- As you approach hills and inclines accelerate a bit more before you get to the incline. This will create more momentum to climb the hill.

- Check your tire pressure as often as possible. Even when you are carrying a load, increase your tire pressure. This also helps your tires to wear evenly.

- Fill up fuel early in the morning. You get more fuel for you money because of the density of the fuel at that part of the morning due to temperature being cooler.

- Leave 10 minutes earlier and drive a little slower, rushing never helps.

- Be courteous when driving. If you are in traffic and someone is trying to cut in front of you, don't try to cut them off, let them go, accelerating to cut someone off only uses up fuel. In any case you are not even going to lose a minute in travelling time by letting them go.

- If you use a heavy traffic route to get to work, try finding an alternate route. Even though it might be a longer route if there is less or no traffic you will definitely save on fuel.

- When approaching a traffic light from a distance and it changes to red stop accelerating, you're going to stop anyway, let the cars momentum take you to the intersection. Do the same when approaching stop streets as well. This will also increase the life of your brakes.

- Revving your car is not good for fuel consumption or the engine itself. Most cars now days are fitted with auto throttle to warm up the engine. You can literally start and drive immediately and your car will do it's thing to warm up the engine by itself.

- When taking off from an incline always use your handbrake (safety brake), you use less fuel when your car is at a standstill then when you are trying to counter act the car from rolling back. This also helps your cars clutch to last longer as well.


I will be adding more to this list so look out for it.